Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 Review

Cap and Iron Man want you, but do you want them?

See, one of the main problems I have with Ultimate Alliance 2 is that it just feels a bit flat. Even though the idea of every character being able to fuse with every character is cool, you quickly realize that you're seeing the same stuff over and over. Iceman and the Human Torch do an attack where they shoot their powers at each other and you can then walk them around mowing anyone who gets in the way of their clothesline -- Captain America and Iron Man do the same thing with Tony blasting Steve's shield. Spidey hurls Wolverine for that Fastball Special, but every other big guy throws him just the same way. Lots of people are using that tornado fusion I wrote about earlier. Everything starts to run together and lose its luster.

In a similar vein, while it's awesome to be able to earn the game's extra costumes, it kind of stinks that there's just one for about every character. In the original Ultimate Alliance, there were three to earn for just about every character and the suits came with different bonuses such as allowing you to gain more XP. That's not the case here as each alternate suit is simply a skin; you could argue that the team Boosts make the old suit boosts irrelevant, but they made switching costumes strategic. Also disappointing is how long it takes to load one of these costumes. Switching Deadpool, Iron Man, and Spidey suits all took about seven seconds each on the PlayStation 3. That's seven seconds of just staring at a star spin on the screen. Similarly annoying is the six to seven seconds it takes to swap out characters. If you want to drop Wolvie and add the Invisible Woman or anyone else for that matter, you're going to be staring at that spinning star again. For the record, the Xbox 360 shaved about three seconds off that load, but that's about the only major difference between the platforms and it still seems like it should be an instantaneous switch.

Burn'em all.

These loads aren't huge issues, but they are a bit glaring when you're talking about the overall polish and presentation of the game. The same can be said the way conversations are handled in Ultimate Alliance 2. When you choose to talk to someone in Stark Tower or an underground SHIELD base, the character will begin yammering and then the camera will turn to you to choose one of three responses -- Aggressive, Diplomatic, or Defensive.

This is cool because not only are you getting to choose the mood of your character but you're also watching a meter fill. Say enough Diplomatic stuff and you'll get one kind of Boost whereas enough Aggressive responses will bring about a different Boost. The things you're saying don't really matter because Nick Fury's always going to give you a cranky answer, but what really hurts this give and take is that your character just stands there like a zombie while you choose the response, and then it jumps back to the NPC for their response. I mean, go look at the video review above and watch the part where the Thing is just standing there like a brain-dead beast. Lame.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the trivia game and mission simulator are back and welcome distractions, but they're presented in the same way as the original game. It eventually gets to the point where you have to scratch your head and wonder why this game took three years to produce when it's so similar to the last one. There are some new audio logs, but they're nothing to write home about seeing as how the voice acting here is pretty bad. I mean, Thor is terrible every time he opens his mouth and the Incredible Hulk radio show that's embedded in the credits is downright awful and a clear indication that the emotional toll of the Civil War storyline was overlooked for this game.

The Verdict

There's no denying that leveling up Iron Man, unlocking Deadpool, and getting Spidey's alternate outfit is fun, but we've done this so many times before. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 adds in Fusion powers, characters, and a bunch of boosts, but in the end it's not enough to keep this from feeling like extremely well-worn territory. I don't have that spark to see and do everything because I feel like I've seen and done everything before. The Stark Tower hub is nearly identical, the cutscenes don't look good, the audio logs to find aren't interesting, and the presentation of the Civil War really doesn't do the emotional storyline justice.

In the end, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is fun at times, but it's nothing impressive overall.